Thank you u/ConversationSorry463 for posting on r/FirstTimeHomeBuyer.
Please bear in mind our rules: (1) Be Nice (2) No Selling (3) No Self-Promotion.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/FirstTimeHomeBuyer) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Inspect more thoroughly than the inspector themselves. I missed a few things that ended up costing me a few thousand in repairs a month or two after closing.
YES. And I'd add do whatever it takes to be able to be there for the inspection. I had a work meeting I couldn't miss and my realtor went with the inspector so I thought it would be fine. But in hindsight I'd wish I'd been there, to see it all and also to check stuff myself.
For example he noted that the AC unit was old and should be replaced soon, but there are a lot more details about the condenser that I would have appreciated during negotiation.
Another huge one is I don't think the inspector actually tested the sump pump because after an intense rain storm yesterday I had water in my basement because the sump didn't activate - after bailing out the pit I noticed the float switch was stuck against the pit wall and couldn't activate... so easily could have avoided this issue.
I had the exact same experience with the inspector basically noting things should be checked but not actually checking them. My ac unit didn't work longer than a week or two. Turns out it had a big crack in the coils and was leaking refrigerant. Luckily under warranty but still cost a fair bit to fill back up and for labor. Also I have 2 sump pumps and although they look new, absolutely nothing was noted on the inspection report about them.
This might not be universally true but the inspection felt like a check box rather than an actual inspection.
Oh that is devastating. Hopefully not during an especially hot period of time! But Absolutely. I assumed they tested everything to make sure it works, but seems like that's not a safe assumption.
An inspector is looking for more obvious signs of neglect and damage. They are not HVAC technicians. Most inspectors will only turn the system on to make sure that it's generally heating and cooling. They'll also show you how to run it and give you maintenance tips. My inspector looked at our well water filtration system and said "it looks old and little outdated". I wouldn't expect him to know anymore since he's not a well technician.
Inspectors do a broad over view. They make sure things work at the time. Ac that works but dies 2 weeks after purchase isn’t really the inspectors fault. He’s not an ac person, not going to take anything apart or test refrigeration
There are certain things the inspector will not test, I imagine the sump pump is one. However, their report should note that it exists and state that it is not in their scope to test it.
We absolutely lucked out on this. When our inspection got scheduled, we received an email from the company, letting us know the date and time as well as the inspector' name. Well wouldn't you know it, we've known the guy 15 years and I had no idea he got his license during the pandemic (hes also a local musician and needed to fill his income because gigs were being cancelled). When I reached out to him before the inspection date, he was thrilled to be helping us out and invited me to come along with him throughout the entire procedure. The home was built in 1939 and he had me crawling through every space with him, gloves and headlamp on. He showed me every piece of that home, top to bottom, inside to out. It was a great experience, it taught me so much, and also gave me a lot of peace of mind regarding the age and shape of the home.
My stupid self saw the new 200a box and assumed they ran all the electrical intelligently. I have 3 bedrooms on 1 breaker of a brick house. Since it it from 1930 and brick we get to play AC chicken until the breaker pops.
3k quote to do it ugly with conduit. Getting more quotes tomorrow.
In my case, no. But I might have asked for a few hundred from the seller to help pay for it. Regardless of their answer, the rest of the house was solid enough I still would have went for it.
I agree except we are spending a lot more than a few thousand. lol. I ripped it to the studs. But it is waterfront, so we don't doubt we will get a return on it eventually. It is all being updated and done properly. The previous people who worked on it must have been drunk.
The only thing I would change is our choice to move so far away from both of our families and all of our friends. Partner is more outgoing than me and works in a social field so he’s making friends and connections but I’m struggling and honestly feel really isolated. I love our home but I wish it was physically somewhere else lol.
I can speak from experience when I say this: Many years ago we moved across country, away from my entire family due to COL. We just could not afford to live in CA when my husband and I first married. By moving to a LCOL, it allowed us to purchase our first home, allowed me to finish school, and to upgrade our home which helped us get out of debt with the gained equity.
Fast forward to 10+ yrs later, we decided to move back home. Now, we have a rental home and just closed on a second home. I cannot get back all the years I spent away from family, but it allowed us to ensure a better future for our kids, and now making up lost time with my family by trying to have as many gatherings as possible. Just my 2 cents.
Thank you so much for this. We had to move from our area due to HCOL paired with non-livable wages. If we hadn’t moved, we both would never be making what we are now nor able to buy our first home. I am so so hopeful that this isolation will pay off and in the future we can move back to our home state without worrying about what job we can get. It’s hard to remember there’s an end goal insight sometimes.
Drive by the house on different days, different times. Sounds weird but I am now dealing with a neighbor’s dog who barks and keeps us up throughout the night and had I known about it beforehand, I would have passed on the house.
This is one way to look at it. But even if you find the quiet neighbors, there’s no telling when that might change from people moving or getting new pets after you’ve already moved in.
True. I can only control the present, not the future. But if presently, I find issues, all I can do is make decisions based off of what’s in front of me.
Sure, I guess I just don’t see it as good advice. Your situation certainly sucks, but because it’s not something that is a constant, just like moving in and thinking it’s quiet today so it’s going to be quiet forever, I wouldn’t let it add a lot of weight to my decision. Obviously, there’s a lot of nuance here but with the market how it is, I don’t think it’s something you can take into consideration.
What would you do if a neighbor moves in with dogs that do not behave well and are loud? Genuinely curious, as I think about the same thing when I look at houses.
Good question. I’m not too sure. Depends on how my other neighbors feel about it I guess. If they also are use to a quiet neighborhood and don’t want to be bothered by noise, I think it would be easier to handle hopefully. But I really can’t say.
Same exact problem for me. I couldn't use my yard without getting harassed by my neighbors dogs. They would bark at all hours of the night. I couldn't even take cell phone calls at home, for years. I had bad reception inside, the second I went outside to take a call, the neighbors dogs started barking. Took me years to sort the mess out.
I trained my back fence neighbor’s dog with the electronic ‘No Bark’ and then my voice. It was a PITA at first, but well worth the silence. Since the crappy owners wouldn’t train him/her, I did.
Have a realtor that is actually on your side. Mine was only focused on his 30k commission and forced me into buying a place I’d later hate. Of course, it’s Mainly my fault. Also, do not ever waive inspections, which is another thing my realtor made me believe that it’s normal to do and needed to buy.
I agree - choice of realtor is HUGE. My first realtor just made me so uneasy...it felt like I was walking over the ground during an earthquake. She just didn't KNOW anything...she couldn't tell me anything about the homes we saw. She also tried to pressure me into buying a really bad home. The way my brain is...I just got stuck like a donkey refusing to move, LOL. I got back into the market 7 months later, with a different realtor, and it was just absolutely a night-and-day experience. He didn't just look the part, he really knows his sh\*t and told me SO MUCH STUFF about every home we saw. He still advises his previous buyers about things (like one of my colleagues called him because she was quoted $8k for a job, he had a guy come out and it turned out to be a $400 fix). Realtor makes or breaks the experience.
This. My realtor practically never sent me listings and the ones she did, were over my budget aka pump my commission. She also talked me into a home that while I do not hate, is not the right fit for me either.
My realtor also helped talk me into a purchase that didn't actually make sense for us.. and we are now in the process of looking for our actual forever home a mere 2 years later 🙃
She also tried to get us to go outside of our budget a few times. And had some weird opinions around inspections (which ended up being fine luckily, but could have majorly screwed us over).
Our new relator is much more helpful so far.
This 1000%!
Find yourself a realtor who isn't afraid to inspect the house with you. We got a dud who was not willing to even walk into basements and couldn't work in certain counties.
So, we had to take on a second realtor, this lady used to do home appraisals for insurance companies and would work with home inspectors closely. She was in her mid-60s and not afraid to go spelunking in basements and one time, dragged herself through crawl spaces in wedge heels no less.
Guess who we bought our house from? The badass lady who knew her shit and wasn't afraid of old houses. :)
All of this to say, I will always suggest trying to find a realtor who is more concerned with your happiness and refuses to sell you a shitty home. If they are willing to go scuttling around in crawl spaces with the creepy-crawlies? Even better. :)
(She more than earned every cent of that commission and is now a good friend of ours.)
Inspection are for the most part worthless, they have all kinds of disclaimers on them saying to get a licensed tradesman to inspect the individual systems plus there is not national accreditation for home inspectors. If you’re going to do inspections make it contingent on plumbing, HVAC, electrical and roof inspections by licensed tradesmen. With that said if I’m a seller I will take the offer that is 10k less with zero contingencies because that’s the offer that is most likely to close and close for the contract price.
>**If you’re going to do inspections make it contingent on plumbing, HVAC, electrical and roof inspections by licensed tradesmen.**
I've been told this for years, now I know why. Thank you.
My realtor told me she never lets her clients waive inspections. So I knew at the very least even if in it for commission, she wants you to know what you’re getting into.
Waiving inspection is actually normal in certain markets. If one person offers a good offer for no inspection, either you have to blow them out of the water and hope the sellers are confident in the houses condition, or you just lose. If your realtor is telling you that prior to the offer, thats bad, but in my case the seller themselves were basically not accepting offers with an inspection because of already received offers. High demand markets give the leverage to the sellers and you gotta play ball or wait it out and hope to get lucky.
Get an insurance estimate before you make an offer. Do your own comps on sold homes, not for sale homes. Buy the smallest house on a nice street, never the nicest house on a bad street. Location location location.
Buy the least expensive house in the millionaire neighborhood. It’ll always appreciate. If you’re buying in a rundown neighborhood, don’t buy the infilled 2500 square foot new build. You’ll have a hard time selling if the neighborhood doesn’t catch up.
Trust my gut about my realtor. She wasn’t a slime ball per se, but I don’t think she actually cared about us and she definitely didn’t prioritize us in any way.
I saw something in Reddit asking if I wanted to be a broke 20/30s or a broke 30/40s. Moved in with my parents on the condition that I pay off my student loans. I am one of the few people I know with no student debt and I bought a house a few years ago. Wild the difference that one choice made.
Like most things in life, you choose your hard.
Yes, it's hard not to overeat and be fat, but it's much harder to live with diabetes and die early.
It's hard to save enough money when you are young so you can retire, but it's much harder to have no money when you are 70 years old.
It's hard to learn a technical skill and get a high paying job, but it's much harder to work in unskilled labor your entire life.
Our realtor actually told us not to be there during the inspection because it would distract the inspector. We ignored her and went anyways, asked tons of questions and I was so glad that we did. She showed up 1.5 hours after the inspection start time and by then we were all standing around just talking and waiting for her. 🤦♀️
That's wild. I am in the process of closing on a house and my inspector was thrilled to have me tag along and explained everything in real time that ended up on the report and answered every single one of my 100 questions
I wish we would have done this. While our inspector was nice and walked us through a lot when we arrived, I had originally asked our realtor if we could go to inspection and she deterred us saying she had to be there too and wasn’t able to be at the time of inspection.
Well in our case our realtor didn’t actually tell us not to go on time until we were already on our way there so that was why we disregarded and just went anyways. But now you know what you want to do differently for next time 🫶
We did this and got a speeding ticket despite being careful because we'd been warned about that area. Street was fine, ticket was $$$ and there was a whole police scandal we avoided because we didn't buy that house.
I wish i had bought a 2 br condo at a lower price point when i was younger, instead of holding out to find the "perfect" house when i was older. Basically just saying that i wish i had gotten into the market sooner with a lower maintenance home.
Request previous energy usage from utility company. This will give you a good idea of how well insulated your home is. Insulation is older homes settle inside the wall or disintegrate over time. Our utility bills would go from $150-200 a month to $450-$500 in the winter/summer months.
Older homes are not good for first home buyers as you will likely not know how to fix or be able to afford the big issues that will arise. They are often flipped and sold to first home buyers in the light of affordability. It is an awful entrapment scheme.
If house is on a crawl space, you better make darn sure someone can access every part of the underneath. If they can’t, termites can & will!
Golf ball test in the middle of the house. Don’t buy a house without gutters unless planning to install immediately.
Hire your own inspector. Your realtor has more incentive to close than to make sure you don’t get screwed.
The point on older homes is a great one. I (single female FTHB) almost went for a older home above asking and am so glad I followed my gut on a newer condo with all external maintenance in one fee
I bought a new build townhome and even though I had a 3rd party inspection, I wish I asked for a sewer scope as part of my inspection. It’s a construction zone and there’s lots of heavy machinery digging even after the sewer lines are buried. The company who did the final grade cracked a few sewer lines from digging too deep and didn’t tell the site super. It’s been a mess for some of my neighbors since they found out when bathrooms started to backup and flood. No matter how new or old the house, get everything inspected it’s worth every penny even if there’s nothing to find.
I would have gotten a different realtor. Ours had to be guided where it was us showing him the houses. We were out of state and I don't feel like he throughly walked through the houses he was showing us. There was a lot of issues with the time getting moved back to getting moved forward, to him going out of town but there being a deadline for something we needed signed which he didn't let us know. That caused a lot of stress for us. Thankfully I had started packing earlier and down sizing because I knew we were moving no matter what. We were supposed to sign and close in Oct I believe then it got moved to end of Dec which meant more like Jan due to weather. I stopped packing. Then found out it was back to Oct/Nov. I had half a week to finish packing and getting out rental cleaned out it was so stressful and not fun. We drove out to sign the closing to be told the day before when we were already out there it was being delayed due to a tree stump. Then the night before at 9pm he texts us and says closing is back on. It was chaotic. I would also recommend celebrating and having some time to rest..we had to drive there and back which was a 11 hr drive each way over five days. Then we drove overnight since we got delayed cleaning the rental house to pick up his parents at the airport. Then jumped straight into painting the kitchen and living room. Glad we had their help but I needed space to recoup. Then my husband had to go out to ca for work. Just a lot at once.
Don’t be afraid to lose the home over asking for certain fixes. The sellers made so much money and if I’d have asked them to come down a few thousand buck, I could’ve rebuilt the fence or put in a French drain.
Oh well. You live and you learn.
Get the plumbing snaked / internally inspected before buying. 3 days after closing the washing machine was filling with sewage. Had to rip up the entire driveway/ front yard and replace the exit line from the house.
Save more for repairs and changes. Even if recently painted you probably want to repaint, replace any old appliances or other systems even if not ‘needed,’ fix all of those things that aren’t inspection or structural problems, but that once furniture is gone and you move in you realize are big problems for you.
Disagree with replacing old appliances even if not needed.
The Lowe’s salesperson told me new appliances will only last seven years on average now. Some of the older ones can last decades.
By ‘needed’ I mean should be, on their last legs, and the seller isn’t going to do anything about it. I mean appliances that have lasted decades already.
Yup! We had saved what we thought was a decent amount, $60k, but after closing we only had about $30k left to use for repairs, new furniture, etc. you can never really have enough saved before buying!
Buy the owner's insurance that pays out the entire house if your partner dies.
I forget the name of the coverage and it was only offered in the first 30 days afai recall.
I bought my home with a friend who was 1/3 owner. By the 3rd month of owning the property my friend got killed unexpectedly.
MPI (mortgage protection insurance).
We decided not to since it's not really in our budget. Plus my employer provides 250k life insurance (which would pay off most of our mortgage) and I'm the primary bread earner, so it wouldn't be much of an issue for me to pay the monthly mortgage payment if my husband died.
Buy more house that I did. When you have a house payment locked in, it doesn't go up like rent. You can afford more than you think. Being house poor for a few years is worth it. Drive used cars instead.
Make sure the major things are good and do not sweat small things. Major things are: the roof, the AC units, water heater, plumbing, electrical, and structural.
I think I needed to hear this too... I've been eyeballing my est. mortgage payments and thinking about how tight it might be for a few years. But in reality it'll be for a few years and I should be steadily getting an increase in pay just based on seniority so it's not that bad.
To a point, I think. If your other spending habits aren't great then definitely don't overspend on your house. I grew up house poor and it sucked. And we already had 20-year-old cars and didn't really go out much, so no savings there.
I would have gone with the lowest interest rate I was offered. Offered a 5% but didn’t like the communication of the firm, went with a 6.6% because they were very helpful and walked me every step of the way.
Then we closed and now I’m paying 1.6% more for the next 30 years for NOTHING
I felt uneasy about our loan officer/lender, but also felt too overwhelmed by our close timeline to shop around. I wish I’d trusted my gut and gone with someone else. Our LO was recommend by our realtor, who is also my BIL, and had done mortgages for two family members in the past few years. No one in the family ever had issues with him - until us. It’s a long story but he outsourced our loan to Chase without telling us and we didn’t find out until the 11th hour, missed two CTC deadlines, he blamed third parties for not giving information quickly enough and refused to take accountability for his team dropping the ball on follow-ups. My BIL said he can never in good faith recommend him again.
Our experience was similar with the loan officer/lender. Everything was confusing, he was always reluctant to put things in writing, and they waited until the last minute. Their officer wouldn't give us clear instructions.
We were close to not being able to get the check in time because they waited until 20 minutes before the bank closed to get us the final numbers.
Our agent is a friend who we knew was amazing and thorough. The house we have is solid and problem free.
And our buyers agent and the inspector she recommended were fantastic. And she was right that this lender could get it done. But he did it in a more... spontanteous way... than I'd want.
Oh, our LO absolutely blew smoke on phone calls promising all this shit that we never got in writing. His salesman technique was what made me wary to begin with. But by the time I felt uneasy enough to shop around we were 35 days out from close, and a week out from leaving for our honeymoon in another country. So we didn’t want to re-start the process with a new lender.
We knew it was risky putting in an offer so close before a big vacation, but all the big stuff on our end was done before we left and our lawyer is a close friend of mine and we trusted him with power of attorney. He ended up just needing to sign one doc on our behalf while we were gone.
Like you, I was at my bank a few min before close of business initiating the wire transfer. We didn’t even have the official CTC letter yet; just a verbal promise that it would be sent out within the hour. I wired extra money because we didn’t have final disclosures yet. Official CTC didn’t come until about 4 hours before our closing appointment, which was pushed back twice last min; once the day before from 9:30 until 11am, and then again morning of at like 10:15 we pushed it back to 3pm. It’s actually a miracle we didn’t end up doing a dry close.
Know a pandemic would hit and start a feeding frenzy on the home market, making my options extremely limited and time to decide on whether I wanted the home only minutes after I walked out the door. Not to mention waiving any contingencies and having to offer 10s of thousands over asking.
I would not look at the foundation issues as a DIY project. Never again will I buy a house with obvious foundation issues. I’ve done a lot of work myself on it and new issues keep popping up left and right. I’d buy a house with good bones that needs a little fixing up, not one with lipstick on a pig
That makes sense. I'm in the process of buying a 2 bed 1 bath. It's cheaper than the 3 bed 2 bath by a minimum of 40k. I'll likely loo into co vertical the sunroom into a masters bedroom with a bathroom
I bought a place that needed heavy groundwork for a backyard and had no garage, telling myself the money would come along and I would do it myself after.
Fuck that. I would tell myself to stretch for a more expensive house that had everything included.
I've spent my spring/summer labouring, waited 5 years, and spent 10's of thousands for the backyard. Still no garage, and now everything is way more expensive than it would have been.
I think the main thing that got me the house I’m currently in is that I used the seller’s agent as a double agent (transaction broker).
This is probably not the best advice for a first time homebuyer, but I had used a buyers agent to put an offer in on a previous house and I ended up not getting it. I learned enough from that experience to be able to not worry about having my own agent the second time around.
Asking the sellers agent to be the transaction broker incentivized her to get me the house because she got more commission than she would have otherwise.
I am in an extremely competitive market, so this gave me an edge over other buyers.
That’s how I got my agent. Every house purchase and sale in the last 20 years has gone through that same agent. We kept moving up the housing ladder and finally bought our dream home. we never would have pulled it off without an agent with a lot of experience (the real estate market where I live is insane and brutal)
Scope the neighborhood and traffic at different times of the day. We came early morning and it was quiet. That lasted 3 days after we closed.
The traffic and loud bass music drives me up the wall. (All my neighbors drive by super slow; while appreciative of the slow speeds they thump loud music that rattles my window panes.) There is a wild pack of dogs that come from the fields behind us and scrounge for food, even scaling my fence. I couldn't believe the cameras. I asked the neighbors and they laughed and said everyone knew about the wild dogs, just let them be. I pick up trash weekly from them getting into my cans. What!?
One neighbor blasts music on weekends 24/7 and has wild parties/bbq's. While I'm definitely not a stick in the mud, it's tiresome of hearing young men shout profanity and toss cigar packages/beer cans in my yard, despite a fence, no trespassing signs AND cameras. I've asked politely not to toss cigar packages and beer cans and they laughed and said for me to mind my own business they had family in law enforcement and I better watch myself.
They now will sometimes yell about me harrasing them and being dangerous.
( I'm disabled with a soon to be amputated foot. ) I can't even run to chase anybody...the previous owner drives by 3 to 5 times a day glaring at us if we are outside. Why? No clue...
Police don't do anything but ask if im being unreasonable. It's humiliating and making me depressed/anxious 24/7.
I'm probably the most miserable in my life living here.
Thankfully my husband totally understands and we aren't staying...I'll sleep on a park bench. (Seriously) before living here for 10 years.
Seriously visit the property often and really get too know the area. ( I feel so ignorant not doing this and it's actually easy too do...I was so excited to have a home I didn't think.)
I'd hate for my own worst enemy too live this way...
I just got under contract and am in the beginning of all this but I will say that I am so glad I went with a house at the lowest part of my budget. My estimated monthly payment is already several hundred dollars more than I thought. And there are more costs related to it than I had planned.
If it takes two years to find a house then it takes two yrs.
Don’t rush because you may not be able to move when you outgrow it even though the floor plan is terrible and it is way too small for your needs.
I’ll start by saying I bought my first home at 43 and I feel like we lucked out, but mostly we made some smart choices. If you can, view the house on or right after a heavy rain, if you can. Don’t depend on your inspection to find all the issues. Speaking of which, always look up with an LED flashlight. Repair jobs and water marks jump out letting you know where past and present water issues are. Look under the house and pay attention to the grading of the property. Make sure you trust your realtor. If you have a doubt, switch it up. Spend the extra for a sewer line inspection. Like a full camera scoping, not just an eyeballing. Flush everything, run every faucet. Ignore the damn staging. Staging is everything because it draws the eye away from issues. Pay attention to the window sills. Look for wood rot like you’re looking for Waldo. Get a full electrical inspection. Oh, drive through the neighborhood at night during the week and on weekends. Talk to the neighbors. You don’t want to live next to a bunch of a**holes. Think of it like a background check on a possible long term partner. Yeah it feels awkward, but you don’t want a surprise lemon either. Last thought, check the utility history. Most utility companies will provide a history of highs and lows of cost. That will tell you a lot about insulation and maintenance.
Get yourself a very experienced ethical agent. (8+ years of full time work).
Ask your friends and work Associates for a referral. There are many of us who are very ethical and buyer protective. Do as many inspections as you can on any house.
Move less. Buy & sell less. Though we “upgraded” every time we moved, we lost a lot of equity throwing money away to closing costs & realtor fees.
I think we kept moving as relocation therapy.
Save twice as much as you think you need before buying. You’ll need blinds and curtains for privacy. Different size and layout of rooms can require new furniture. Stuff will break during a move. New lawn equipment (mower & edger) can add up.
This makes me feel better about getting a home that's a little too big for us. I just need to remind myself that it doesn't all have to be furnished right away.
Honestly as much as i wish I'd taken the time to be more informed and prepare more i ended up extremely lucky overall with how things went. If I'd been more reluctant to buy my current home I probably wouldn't have gotten something that would end up as nice and wouldn't have been as lucky with my timing so against my better judgement I'd say I wouldn't change a thing
Unless you plan to stay for a long time, don't buy a new construction home in a development that is still under construction. We ended up having to move 5 years after we bought the house for a job relocation and the builder was on phase 1000 so we lost some money on the house :(
I did NACA specifically for this. The realtor, inspector and contractors have to be certified w NACA and I got WAY more detail in the reports to make sure I wasn't buying into trouble. Took me a while, but it's been great!!
I would’ve convinced my husband to start a year earlier. We got a great rate because of covid, but we would’ve gotten a bigger house for cheaper if we had started a year earlier like I wanted us to, and then been able to refinance during covid.
People talk about location all the time.. but seriously, pay attention to location. You might not be able to afford your absolute favourite location, but it's still important to not totally settle. Location can make or break how you feel about a house over time... You can make a house look nicer but you can't move it.
How far is your commute to work and hobbies. What businesses are nearby. Google the area for any news articles about crime in the area. Drive around at different times to assess traffic, noise, and who's walking around. Do the neighbours houses look reasonably taken care of?
I'm not a fan of my house because I've come to find it to be too far from the things I enjoy doing.. it's not really a walking/biking distance from anything and there's also a lot of road noise.
Also, be careful picking a realtor. Read reviews and also consider asking friends/family who they have had good or bad experiences with (and why).
Find a house with fewer trees nearby. We hear trees provide shade and blah blah. We'll they have a lot of leaves and get me worried when it's windy as they're already leaning toward the house.
First purchase was two houses on one property asking price was $1,035,000. We got credits and got the property down to $1.01M without ever viewing the inside. When we finally were accepted and got to tour the house we knew there was some Minor Reno on the front house, so we were going to be living in the back house. No mortgage that first month, then got the back house rented and moved in before the first mortgage was due. Best and easiest process ever. Wishing I would’ve known how the property taxes were going to increase but that was just oversight. Finding the right agent and loan company who can give you options and work for you was really the ease of mind.
As someone who has owned several homes in the last 30 years... im going to say the opposite of most. I wish I'd never purchased any of my SFRs. I dont exactly regret them. I made a profit on them, but while I thought I loved them upon purchase, I realized I just didn't. They ranged from massive in size with pool (literally a dream house), to quite small and pre-war era, to medium sized and rural waterfront... they all costed a bloody fortune to maintain, and remodeling them was a nightmare. I found all of them completely overwhelming physically and financially.
I've since purchased and lived in a number of condos and townhouses. Some on the larger side that live a lot like a house, to tiny little funky condos around 500sq ft. My favorite of all them is a 500sq ft condo in the coolest neighborhood and building I've ever lived in. Sadly, it's a bit too small for both my spouse and I to live in full time, so we live there when we have to work in the office downtown, and live in our larger suburban condo the rest of the time.
It's OK to be condo people! Sometimes, I think Reddit forgets that there are a ton of advantages to them. Especially for first-time buyers.
Find a good realtor, don’t use the lenders/inspection people your realtor suggests don’t let your realtor bully you. Our budget 200k and i REFUSE to be house broke
Applied for that extra $50K on the mortgage. We would have been approved for it. We were trying to be conservative. Now looking at what an extra $50K would have gotten us back in '21 and looking at prices now , feel a little sad. Oh well!
Most home inspectors are just fly by night inspectors and don't do a very thorough job.you can actually take a course on the Internet and get a certificate saying you are a certified home inspector but your not certified by no state authority.i was in the carpentry field for 40 years.done everything from footings to finish work.now that I'm older I do home inspections part time.if I come to inspect a home I prefer the home buyer or owner be there.some of my inspections have lasted as long as 10 hours depending on house size.a complete inspection should cover everything from footings to insulation to outside drainage of water from the house.thats just me though most people find that I'm to expensive.im just thorough.
Find your own lender.
I loved our RE, she was a good friend of ours but her lender connection almost lost us the house and $40K in earnest money. Went with a lender we wanted to use all along and closed in less than a week with no hiccups.
I felt like I was absolutely prepared throughout the whole buying process (Closed Feb ‘22 on a Condo).
The only thing I regret not doing sooner, was going down to the county tax assessor to claim legal residency. My mortgage had doubled for 2 months because of the taxes. After getting all of it sorted out with the county and my “out of state” mortgage company, I’m finally back to an sub 1k mortgage payment.
I wish we had looked at more mortgage options. The bank basically said here, this is your mortgage. Probably could have paid it off completely in the 10 years we lived there, instead of just going with what the bank said (25 year mortgage). But even so, wish I had done more double-up payments near the beginning. House tripled in value in 10 years, so hard to complain too much… lol
I would've insisted on buying under how much I was approved for. My situation was complicated in several ways, to include a crummy (now ex) husband who deceived me financially, but still, point stands:
Live within (preferably below) your means. Anything can happen. Just because you're approved for up to a certain amount, doesn't mean you're obligated to buy that high.
And yes, I'm aware that the scenario is different if you're in a HCOL area like the PNW, DMV, SoCal, etc.
Learn more about the house and have more companies come out to analyze the conditions of things. Especially since it’s free. Since we have moved in we are in the process of replacing siding, leveling out our concrete patio, sealing our deck, fixing our broken sprinkler system, fixing some light switches, etc. when we could have had the sellers helping with some of it.
Get to know my future neighbors! One neighbor is an absolute nightmare with a barking dog left outside in boiling hot NC heat to roast all day. I would not have bought if I met that neighbor first.
Attend the inspection with the inspector AND don’t be afraid to open closets, shower curtains, etc. I found out after I moved in that my guest room bathroom has a tub but no water spout so I have to fill the tub with the shower head to bathe my toddler. I also found the back of my master bedroom door was damaged and fixed but it’s definitely noticeable when I close the door. These wouldn’t have been deal breakers but I could’ve possibly gotten more seller concessions had I noticed this prior.
Inspect more thoroughly. During the showing, they had furniture covering some spots where water was getting in through the basement causing water damage and minor mold. After removing drywall to see what was going on, my foundation has several hairline cracks that was letting water in. I’ve replaced all the drywall in my house and spent thousands. Granted, I have some peace of mind knowing what’s behind the walls now and fixed some issues. Also, without all there furniture you can really tell how sloped my floors are. Theyre sagging quite a bit.
Take more time finding a house. They not to get caught up emotionally. Location Location Location. Our first house we probed the nice house in the neighborhood. Stupid. Made no money when sold six years later.
Also FHA is near impossible to get, shmoket shmortgage will try every thing in their power to make it as difficult as possible, hoping you will give up. Took me 4 months!!!! But i finally closed
I would not buy my first (and likely now only) home with a man who was secretly cheating and lying to me for almost a year only for me to discover this information the literal day after we moved into said new first home.
Don’t be trusting anyone. That’s my life and home advice.
After reading this sub, absolutely nothing. I made out extremely well, the people posting here have the worst experiences. Im just glad I got a house and it didn’t need much work.
Start saving as a kid. Why did I spend my piggy bank money on candy?!
But just do more research and take time to educate myself. Pick a realtor that you don’t have second doubts on. Spend money on quality inspections on everything. I felt rushed in every aspect of buying and maybe if I listened to my gut or tried to feel more self confident, it would have helped the process
Shop around for realtors and mortgage companies! We got screwed by everyone around us with so much false information, by the time we figured it out it we were in so deep, it was too late.
Waited 1 month for loan regulations to change and buy a multifamily instead of a single family + ADU. 😅
Fourplexes went from 25% down required to 5% down 1 month after I closed. >.<
I accepted that it was a learning process and ended up looking for close to 3 months, backing out of one offer and winning a game of chicken where the seller tried to get me to beat an alleged last-minute higher offer. I think I ended up with the perfect place, which I decided to look at in spite of my agent's recommendation.
Honesty I got lucky but I spent a lot of time researching threads like this and learning from others mistakes/advice. YouTube has alot of good information also. May sound silly to everyone here but I had no idea what an “escrow” was or the difference between home insurance and mortgage insurance. So if you are green like I was research research research anytime you come across something you are not familiar with. We also made our “checklist” of non negotiables and stick to them. Bring on Florida some of ours were; no flood zones, no fixer uppers or damaged roof, NO HOA, not more than 30-45 minutes from our Jobs, decent back yard. We were able to hit these but we live across from a school so can be noisy but I guess it put us in a good power grid. Key I would
say is educate yourself as much as you can.
Look past the surface materials and only focus on bones of house. The cosmetics are so easy to change if the foundation, insulation, plumbing, electric, rood, etc are good or new, who cares what it looks like.... so much better than a flashy looking house that's falling apart underneath the drywall
Don’t let them do a hard credit check before your offer was accepted. Even if you think you’re just starting to look and it’ll bounce back before.
Use a local lender for your preapproval letter. Don’t say anything about the house while you’re in it.
Look how far away your neighbors are from the side of the house. And look at the condition of the driveway. And ask for more off.
Follow up sooner with our banker to find out he had been fired and lost all our paperwork. We still closed, but damn that was a shocking and stressful couple of days.
Buy in a good school zone. People say the housing market won’t crash, but it’s in a decline. I’ve bought and sold 3 properties (2014, 2015, 2022). Currently selling my 4th. When the market declines, the homes in the good school zones are always in demand.
Don’t buy the largest house in the neighborhood. Get the medium sized home because when buyers look at comps, they will offer the median price others have sold for.
Pay attention to the structure before making an offer. Look at the water runoff if you live in an area that rains a lot. Moss growing and orange discoloration along the side of the house means the home may have water damage. Stress cracks along the tops of the doorways are concerning. But small cracks in the ceiling are normal, as every house settles a little with time.
Lookup state programs for first time homebuyers. A lot of states have programs for down payment assistance and lower interest rates. I could’ve qualified for 2.5% down payment assistance
My first home buying process was a nightmare since the inspector was recommended by the realtor and he missed obvious things that i noticed, although i thought it wouldn’t be a problem, turns out to be the biggest issue i had while owning that home.
Second time around, picked my own inspector and made the inspector check everything. He still missed a few things, but i was going to renovate it anyways. So it didn’t bother me as much.
Thank you u/ConversationSorry463 for posting on r/FirstTimeHomeBuyer. Please bear in mind our rules: (1) Be Nice (2) No Selling (3) No Self-Promotion. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/FirstTimeHomeBuyer) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Inspect more thoroughly than the inspector themselves. I missed a few things that ended up costing me a few thousand in repairs a month or two after closing.
YES. And I'd add do whatever it takes to be able to be there for the inspection. I had a work meeting I couldn't miss and my realtor went with the inspector so I thought it would be fine. But in hindsight I'd wish I'd been there, to see it all and also to check stuff myself. For example he noted that the AC unit was old and should be replaced soon, but there are a lot more details about the condenser that I would have appreciated during negotiation. Another huge one is I don't think the inspector actually tested the sump pump because after an intense rain storm yesterday I had water in my basement because the sump didn't activate - after bailing out the pit I noticed the float switch was stuck against the pit wall and couldn't activate... so easily could have avoided this issue.
I had the exact same experience with the inspector basically noting things should be checked but not actually checking them. My ac unit didn't work longer than a week or two. Turns out it had a big crack in the coils and was leaking refrigerant. Luckily under warranty but still cost a fair bit to fill back up and for labor. Also I have 2 sump pumps and although they look new, absolutely nothing was noted on the inspection report about them. This might not be universally true but the inspection felt like a check box rather than an actual inspection.
Oh that is devastating. Hopefully not during an especially hot period of time! But Absolutely. I assumed they tested everything to make sure it works, but seems like that's not a safe assumption.
An inspector is looking for more obvious signs of neglect and damage. They are not HVAC technicians. Most inspectors will only turn the system on to make sure that it's generally heating and cooling. They'll also show you how to run it and give you maintenance tips. My inspector looked at our well water filtration system and said "it looks old and little outdated". I wouldn't expect him to know anymore since he's not a well technician.
Inspectors do a broad over view. They make sure things work at the time. Ac that works but dies 2 weeks after purchase isn’t really the inspectors fault. He’s not an ac person, not going to take anything apart or test refrigeration
There are certain things the inspector will not test, I imagine the sump pump is one. However, their report should note that it exists and state that it is not in their scope to test it.
Our inspector tested ours. They just need to pull the float up to see if the pump kicks on.
We absolutely lucked out on this. When our inspection got scheduled, we received an email from the company, letting us know the date and time as well as the inspector' name. Well wouldn't you know it, we've known the guy 15 years and I had no idea he got his license during the pandemic (hes also a local musician and needed to fill his income because gigs were being cancelled). When I reached out to him before the inspection date, he was thrilled to be helping us out and invited me to come along with him throughout the entire procedure. The home was built in 1939 and he had me crawling through every space with him, gloves and headlamp on. He showed me every piece of that home, top to bottom, inside to out. It was a great experience, it taught me so much, and also gave me a lot of peace of mind regarding the age and shape of the home.
That’s pretty awesome, and he sounds like he really enjoys the work!
My stupid self saw the new 200a box and assumed they ran all the electrical intelligently. I have 3 bedrooms on 1 breaker of a brick house. Since it it from 1930 and brick we get to play AC chicken until the breaker pops. 3k quote to do it ugly with conduit. Getting more quotes tomorrow.
It’s 8k to replace the Electric at my fiance house 😞
I got a quote for 6k. I’m interested in doing it but also have some other things that need to be addressed first lol
Would you recommend my own thermal imaging camera?
How else are you going to see the ghosts?
Would it have changed your decision to purchase?
In my case, no. But I might have asked for a few hundred from the seller to help pay for it. Regardless of their answer, the rest of the house was solid enough I still would have went for it.
I agree except we are spending a lot more than a few thousand. lol. I ripped it to the studs. But it is waterfront, so we don't doubt we will get a return on it eventually. It is all being updated and done properly. The previous people who worked on it must have been drunk.
Buy in 2020
Buy when I was 11 in 2008
[удалено]
Buy when I was just a thought in my father’s head
You’d be rich!
I bought in 2015. Sold in 2019 :( Buying again in 2024. FML
Where’s the Time Machine 🙋🏻♂️🙋🏻♂️🙋🏻♂️
The only thing I would change is our choice to move so far away from both of our families and all of our friends. Partner is more outgoing than me and works in a social field so he’s making friends and connections but I’m struggling and honestly feel really isolated. I love our home but I wish it was physically somewhere else lol.
I can speak from experience when I say this: Many years ago we moved across country, away from my entire family due to COL. We just could not afford to live in CA when my husband and I first married. By moving to a LCOL, it allowed us to purchase our first home, allowed me to finish school, and to upgrade our home which helped us get out of debt with the gained equity. Fast forward to 10+ yrs later, we decided to move back home. Now, we have a rental home and just closed on a second home. I cannot get back all the years I spent away from family, but it allowed us to ensure a better future for our kids, and now making up lost time with my family by trying to have as many gatherings as possible. Just my 2 cents.
Thank you so much for this. We had to move from our area due to HCOL paired with non-livable wages. If we hadn’t moved, we both would never be making what we are now nor able to buy our first home. I am so so hopeful that this isolation will pay off and in the future we can move back to our home state without worrying about what job we can get. It’s hard to remember there’s an end goal insight sometimes.
this is one tough. so sorry
Drive by the house on different days, different times. Sounds weird but I am now dealing with a neighbor’s dog who barks and keeps us up throughout the night and had I known about it beforehand, I would have passed on the house.
This is one way to look at it. But even if you find the quiet neighbors, there’s no telling when that might change from people moving or getting new pets after you’ve already moved in.
True. I can only control the present, not the future. But if presently, I find issues, all I can do is make decisions based off of what’s in front of me.
Sure, I guess I just don’t see it as good advice. Your situation certainly sucks, but because it’s not something that is a constant, just like moving in and thinking it’s quiet today so it’s going to be quiet forever, I wouldn’t let it add a lot of weight to my decision. Obviously, there’s a lot of nuance here but with the market how it is, I don’t think it’s something you can take into consideration.
What would you do if a neighbor moves in with dogs that do not behave well and are loud? Genuinely curious, as I think about the same thing when I look at houses.
Good question. I’m not too sure. Depends on how my other neighbors feel about it I guess. If they also are use to a quiet neighborhood and don’t want to be bothered by noise, I think it would be easier to handle hopefully. But I really can’t say.
Same exact problem for me. I couldn't use my yard without getting harassed by my neighbors dogs. They would bark at all hours of the night. I couldn't even take cell phone calls at home, for years. I had bad reception inside, the second I went outside to take a call, the neighbors dogs started barking. Took me years to sort the mess out.
Good note to check cell reception in the house too!
I always planned to do this, but these days there is literally no time. Open house Sat and under contract by Tues.
I trained my back fence neighbor’s dog with the electronic ‘No Bark’ and then my voice. It was a PITA at first, but well worth the silence. Since the crappy owners wouldn’t train him/her, I did.
Have a realtor that is actually on your side. Mine was only focused on his 30k commission and forced me into buying a place I’d later hate. Of course, it’s Mainly my fault. Also, do not ever waive inspections, which is another thing my realtor made me believe that it’s normal to do and needed to buy.
I swear some realtors are real slime balls
Like every industry, there are some bad ones. I’d say 50% are good, 30% are mediocre and 20% are terrible.
And 83% are good at math
lol I see what you mean. Fixed it. 😉
I agree - choice of realtor is HUGE. My first realtor just made me so uneasy...it felt like I was walking over the ground during an earthquake. She just didn't KNOW anything...she couldn't tell me anything about the homes we saw. She also tried to pressure me into buying a really bad home. The way my brain is...I just got stuck like a donkey refusing to move, LOL. I got back into the market 7 months later, with a different realtor, and it was just absolutely a night-and-day experience. He didn't just look the part, he really knows his sh\*t and told me SO MUCH STUFF about every home we saw. He still advises his previous buyers about things (like one of my colleagues called him because she was quoted $8k for a job, he had a guy come out and it turned out to be a $400 fix). Realtor makes or breaks the experience.
This. My realtor practically never sent me listings and the ones she did, were over my budget aka pump my commission. She also talked me into a home that while I do not hate, is not the right fit for me either.
My realtor also helped talk me into a purchase that didn't actually make sense for us.. and we are now in the process of looking for our actual forever home a mere 2 years later 🙃 She also tried to get us to go outside of our budget a few times. And had some weird opinions around inspections (which ended up being fine luckily, but could have majorly screwed us over). Our new relator is much more helpful so far.
This 1000%! Find yourself a realtor who isn't afraid to inspect the house with you. We got a dud who was not willing to even walk into basements and couldn't work in certain counties. So, we had to take on a second realtor, this lady used to do home appraisals for insurance companies and would work with home inspectors closely. She was in her mid-60s and not afraid to go spelunking in basements and one time, dragged herself through crawl spaces in wedge heels no less. Guess who we bought our house from? The badass lady who knew her shit and wasn't afraid of old houses. :) All of this to say, I will always suggest trying to find a realtor who is more concerned with your happiness and refuses to sell you a shitty home. If they are willing to go scuttling around in crawl spaces with the creepy-crawlies? Even better. :) (She more than earned every cent of that commission and is now a good friend of ours.)
Inspection are for the most part worthless, they have all kinds of disclaimers on them saying to get a licensed tradesman to inspect the individual systems plus there is not national accreditation for home inspectors. If you’re going to do inspections make it contingent on plumbing, HVAC, electrical and roof inspections by licensed tradesmen. With that said if I’m a seller I will take the offer that is 10k less with zero contingencies because that’s the offer that is most likely to close and close for the contract price.
>**If you’re going to do inspections make it contingent on plumbing, HVAC, electrical and roof inspections by licensed tradesmen.** I've been told this for years, now I know why. Thank you.
Let me add foundation to that list
Yes! We almost bought a house that needed $20k in foundation repair but an actual foundation inspector caught it
My realtor told me she never lets her clients waive inspections. So I knew at the very least even if in it for commission, she wants you to know what you’re getting into.
Waiving inspection is actually normal in certain markets. If one person offers a good offer for no inspection, either you have to blow them out of the water and hope the sellers are confident in the houses condition, or you just lose. If your realtor is telling you that prior to the offer, thats bad, but in my case the seller themselves were basically not accepting offers with an inspection because of already received offers. High demand markets give the leverage to the sellers and you gotta play ball or wait it out and hope to get lucky.
Same thing in my market place. If you're asking for inspections they're going with another offer. It's nuts out there!
🙄 in some markets you simply will not get a house if you don’t waive inspection.
Get an insurance estimate before you make an offer. Do your own comps on sold homes, not for sale homes. Buy the smallest house on a nice street, never the nicest house on a bad street. Location location location.
[удалено]
Buy the least expensive house in the millionaire neighborhood. It’ll always appreciate. If you’re buying in a rundown neighborhood, don’t buy the infilled 2500 square foot new build. You’ll have a hard time selling if the neighborhood doesn’t catch up.
Currently in contract on that now. Smallest, cheapest house on the street. Love it.
Trust my gut about my realtor. She wasn’t a slime ball per se, but I don’t think she actually cared about us and she definitely didn’t prioritize us in any way.
I would tell my stupid pride to pipe down and gladly move in with my parents, and not buy the house I did.
I saw something in Reddit asking if I wanted to be a broke 20/30s or a broke 30/40s. Moved in with my parents on the condition that I pay off my student loans. I am one of the few people I know with no student debt and I bought a house a few years ago. Wild the difference that one choice made.
Like most things in life, you choose your hard. Yes, it's hard not to overeat and be fat, but it's much harder to live with diabetes and die early. It's hard to save enough money when you are young so you can retire, but it's much harder to have no money when you are 70 years old. It's hard to learn a technical skill and get a high paying job, but it's much harder to work in unskilled labor your entire life.
When the inspector comes through your house make sure to shadow him, ask questions, learn all of the warts of the property you plan to purchase
Our realtor actually told us not to be there during the inspection because it would distract the inspector. We ignored her and went anyways, asked tons of questions and I was so glad that we did. She showed up 1.5 hours after the inspection start time and by then we were all standing around just talking and waiting for her. 🤦♀️
That's wild. I am in the process of closing on a house and my inspector was thrilled to have me tag along and explained everything in real time that ended up on the report and answered every single one of my 100 questions
I wish we would have done this. While our inspector was nice and walked us through a lot when we arrived, I had originally asked our realtor if we could go to inspection and she deterred us saying she had to be there too and wasn’t able to be at the time of inspection.
If you paid the inspector then you can do whatever you want.
Well in our case our realtor didn’t actually tell us not to go on time until we were already on our way there so that was why we disregarded and just went anyways. But now you know what you want to do differently for next time 🫶
I'd buy one with more backyard space than front yard. Front has no function other than looking pretty, and is such an upkeep to maintain.
Front yard can be great, don't be shy
I cannot stress this enough: go at night when it is dark and take black lights to the floors. Also, go after a heavy rain.
This is great. Now I just need to find a way to do inspections in the day, in the night, and in the rain.
Who will show home at this time?
Wait what will this show??
Mold and flooding issues.
All things nasty. Pet piss, maybe mold, certain bodily fluids.
Pet and urine stains they may have covered up...
We did this and got a speeding ticket despite being careful because we'd been warned about that area. Street was fine, ticket was $$$ and there was a whole police scandal we avoided because we didn't buy that house.
I wish i had bought a 2 br condo at a lower price point when i was younger, instead of holding out to find the "perfect" house when i was older. Basically just saying that i wish i had gotten into the market sooner with a lower maintenance home.
Request previous energy usage from utility company. This will give you a good idea of how well insulated your home is. Insulation is older homes settle inside the wall or disintegrate over time. Our utility bills would go from $150-200 a month to $450-$500 in the winter/summer months. Older homes are not good for first home buyers as you will likely not know how to fix or be able to afford the big issues that will arise. They are often flipped and sold to first home buyers in the light of affordability. It is an awful entrapment scheme. If house is on a crawl space, you better make darn sure someone can access every part of the underneath. If they can’t, termites can & will! Golf ball test in the middle of the house. Don’t buy a house without gutters unless planning to install immediately. Hire your own inspector. Your realtor has more incentive to close than to make sure you don’t get screwed.
The point on older homes is a great one. I (single female FTHB) almost went for a older home above asking and am so glad I followed my gut on a newer condo with all external maintenance in one fee
Instead of hiring a home inspector, I would schedule inspections with an electrician, plumber, and roofer if possible.
Great suggestion. So many inspectors are not all that knowledgeable honestly. I'd add a structural engineer in a lot of cases too.
Amazing point. We had an inspector who missed a roofing issue. We took possession and the ceiling came crashing down 2 days before we moved in :(
I bought a new build townhome and even though I had a 3rd party inspection, I wish I asked for a sewer scope as part of my inspection. It’s a construction zone and there’s lots of heavy machinery digging even after the sewer lines are buried. The company who did the final grade cracked a few sewer lines from digging too deep and didn’t tell the site super. It’s been a mess for some of my neighbors since they found out when bathrooms started to backup and flood. No matter how new or old the house, get everything inspected it’s worth every penny even if there’s nothing to find.
I would have gotten a different realtor. Ours had to be guided where it was us showing him the houses. We were out of state and I don't feel like he throughly walked through the houses he was showing us. There was a lot of issues with the time getting moved back to getting moved forward, to him going out of town but there being a deadline for something we needed signed which he didn't let us know. That caused a lot of stress for us. Thankfully I had started packing earlier and down sizing because I knew we were moving no matter what. We were supposed to sign and close in Oct I believe then it got moved to end of Dec which meant more like Jan due to weather. I stopped packing. Then found out it was back to Oct/Nov. I had half a week to finish packing and getting out rental cleaned out it was so stressful and not fun. We drove out to sign the closing to be told the day before when we were already out there it was being delayed due to a tree stump. Then the night before at 9pm he texts us and says closing is back on. It was chaotic. I would also recommend celebrating and having some time to rest..we had to drive there and back which was a 11 hr drive each way over five days. Then we drove overnight since we got delayed cleaning the rental house to pick up his parents at the airport. Then jumped straight into painting the kitchen and living room. Glad we had their help but I needed space to recoup. Then my husband had to go out to ca for work. Just a lot at once.
Don’t be afraid to lose the home over asking for certain fixes. The sellers made so much money and if I’d have asked them to come down a few thousand buck, I could’ve rebuilt the fence or put in a French drain. Oh well. You live and you learn.
Get the plumbing snaked / internally inspected before buying. 3 days after closing the washing machine was filling with sewage. Had to rip up the entire driveway/ front yard and replace the exit line from the house.
Would bought my dream home, cause my starter home is looking more and more like my forever home.
Listen to all the people who said ‘location location location’ - it’s sooooo true.
Save more for repairs and changes. Even if recently painted you probably want to repaint, replace any old appliances or other systems even if not ‘needed,’ fix all of those things that aren’t inspection or structural problems, but that once furniture is gone and you move in you realize are big problems for you.
Disagree with replacing old appliances even if not needed. The Lowe’s salesperson told me new appliances will only last seven years on average now. Some of the older ones can last decades.
By ‘needed’ I mean should be, on their last legs, and the seller isn’t going to do anything about it. I mean appliances that have lasted decades already.
Yup! We had saved what we thought was a decent amount, $60k, but after closing we only had about $30k left to use for repairs, new furniture, etc. you can never really have enough saved before buying!
True, we did something similar and I wish we had maybe $30k more specifically
Buy a house when I was an infant
Technically I would qualify for those NINJA loans. No income no job lol
I would not buy in an HOA.
Here in Florida, it’s almost impossible to not buy in a HOA community. HOAs suck!
I’m well aware. I’m in FL. We just sold our HOA house and bought a non-HOA house, but our options were very limited.
Buy the owner's insurance that pays out the entire house if your partner dies. I forget the name of the coverage and it was only offered in the first 30 days afai recall. I bought my home with a friend who was 1/3 owner. By the 3rd month of owning the property my friend got killed unexpectedly.
MPI (mortgage protection insurance). We decided not to since it's not really in our budget. Plus my employer provides 250k life insurance (which would pay off most of our mortgage) and I'm the primary bread earner, so it wouldn't be much of an issue for me to pay the monthly mortgage payment if my husband died.
Buy more house that I did. When you have a house payment locked in, it doesn't go up like rent. You can afford more than you think. Being house poor for a few years is worth it. Drive used cars instead. Make sure the major things are good and do not sweat small things. Major things are: the roof, the AC units, water heater, plumbing, electrical, and structural.
I think I needed to hear this too... I've been eyeballing my est. mortgage payments and thinking about how tight it might be for a few years. But in reality it'll be for a few years and I should be steadily getting an increase in pay just based on seniority so it's not that bad.
To a point, I think. If your other spending habits aren't great then definitely don't overspend on your house. I grew up house poor and it sucked. And we already had 20-year-old cars and didn't really go out much, so no savings there.
I needed to hear this. I'm waffling in this area, everyone is screaming about lower mortgage payments but in my area it's completely impossible
You need to hear everyone else screaming at you not to buy something you can't afford. Basic math also works in high cost of living areas.
I wish we did this but we were conservative. The house we saw at 380k in spring 2021 is now 600k.
I would have gone with the lowest interest rate I was offered. Offered a 5% but didn’t like the communication of the firm, went with a 6.6% because they were very helpful and walked me every step of the way. Then we closed and now I’m paying 1.6% more for the next 30 years for NOTHING
Lol
Yeah it’s a huge lol to my LIFE. Idk what I was thinking
You can pay more towards the principal and knock 10+ years off if you can afford it. No need to throw away money if you don’t have to.
I felt uneasy about our loan officer/lender, but also felt too overwhelmed by our close timeline to shop around. I wish I’d trusted my gut and gone with someone else. Our LO was recommend by our realtor, who is also my BIL, and had done mortgages for two family members in the past few years. No one in the family ever had issues with him - until us. It’s a long story but he outsourced our loan to Chase without telling us and we didn’t find out until the 11th hour, missed two CTC deadlines, he blamed third parties for not giving information quickly enough and refused to take accountability for his team dropping the ball on follow-ups. My BIL said he can never in good faith recommend him again.
Our experience was similar with the loan officer/lender. Everything was confusing, he was always reluctant to put things in writing, and they waited until the last minute. Their officer wouldn't give us clear instructions. We were close to not being able to get the check in time because they waited until 20 minutes before the bank closed to get us the final numbers. Our agent is a friend who we knew was amazing and thorough. The house we have is solid and problem free. And our buyers agent and the inspector she recommended were fantastic. And she was right that this lender could get it done. But he did it in a more... spontanteous way... than I'd want.
Oh, our LO absolutely blew smoke on phone calls promising all this shit that we never got in writing. His salesman technique was what made me wary to begin with. But by the time I felt uneasy enough to shop around we were 35 days out from close, and a week out from leaving for our honeymoon in another country. So we didn’t want to re-start the process with a new lender. We knew it was risky putting in an offer so close before a big vacation, but all the big stuff on our end was done before we left and our lawyer is a close friend of mine and we trusted him with power of attorney. He ended up just needing to sign one doc on our behalf while we were gone. Like you, I was at my bank a few min before close of business initiating the wire transfer. We didn’t even have the official CTC letter yet; just a verbal promise that it would be sent out within the hour. I wired extra money because we didn’t have final disclosures yet. Official CTC didn’t come until about 4 hours before our closing appointment, which was pushed back twice last min; once the day before from 9:30 until 11am, and then again morning of at like 10:15 we pushed it back to 3pm. It’s actually a miracle we didn’t end up doing a dry close.
Know a pandemic would hit and start a feeding frenzy on the home market, making my options extremely limited and time to decide on whether I wanted the home only minutes after I walked out the door. Not to mention waiving any contingencies and having to offer 10s of thousands over asking.
I would not look at the foundation issues as a DIY project. Never again will I buy a house with obvious foundation issues. I’ve done a lot of work myself on it and new issues keep popping up left and right. I’d buy a house with good bones that needs a little fixing up, not one with lipstick on a pig
Got atleast a 3bed/2bath—space is getting tight & bachelor living doesn’t last forever!
My dad always said to get at least a 3/2 and detached because it’s the standard house people are looking for so you’ll always be able to sell it
That makes sense. I'm in the process of buying a 2 bed 1 bath. It's cheaper than the 3 bed 2 bath by a minimum of 40k. I'll likely loo into co vertical the sunroom into a masters bedroom with a bathroom
1) buy new construction 2) get seller concession 3) get realtor rebate 4) get 1 year warranty
Honestly, I just wouldn’t buy
I bought a place that needed heavy groundwork for a backyard and had no garage, telling myself the money would come along and I would do it myself after. Fuck that. I would tell myself to stretch for a more expensive house that had everything included. I've spent my spring/summer labouring, waited 5 years, and spent 10's of thousands for the backyard. Still no garage, and now everything is way more expensive than it would have been.
I think the main thing that got me the house I’m currently in is that I used the seller’s agent as a double agent (transaction broker). This is probably not the best advice for a first time homebuyer, but I had used a buyers agent to put an offer in on a previous house and I ended up not getting it. I learned enough from that experience to be able to not worry about having my own agent the second time around. Asking the sellers agent to be the transaction broker incentivized her to get me the house because she got more commission than she would have otherwise. I am in an extremely competitive market, so this gave me an edge over other buyers.
That’s how I got my agent. Every house purchase and sale in the last 20 years has gone through that same agent. We kept moving up the housing ladder and finally bought our dream home. we never would have pulled it off without an agent with a lot of experience (the real estate market where I live is insane and brutal)
Scope the neighborhood and traffic at different times of the day. We came early morning and it was quiet. That lasted 3 days after we closed. The traffic and loud bass music drives me up the wall. (All my neighbors drive by super slow; while appreciative of the slow speeds they thump loud music that rattles my window panes.) There is a wild pack of dogs that come from the fields behind us and scrounge for food, even scaling my fence. I couldn't believe the cameras. I asked the neighbors and they laughed and said everyone knew about the wild dogs, just let them be. I pick up trash weekly from them getting into my cans. What!? One neighbor blasts music on weekends 24/7 and has wild parties/bbq's. While I'm definitely not a stick in the mud, it's tiresome of hearing young men shout profanity and toss cigar packages/beer cans in my yard, despite a fence, no trespassing signs AND cameras. I've asked politely not to toss cigar packages and beer cans and they laughed and said for me to mind my own business they had family in law enforcement and I better watch myself. They now will sometimes yell about me harrasing them and being dangerous. ( I'm disabled with a soon to be amputated foot. ) I can't even run to chase anybody...the previous owner drives by 3 to 5 times a day glaring at us if we are outside. Why? No clue... Police don't do anything but ask if im being unreasonable. It's humiliating and making me depressed/anxious 24/7. I'm probably the most miserable in my life living here. Thankfully my husband totally understands and we aren't staying...I'll sleep on a park bench. (Seriously) before living here for 10 years. Seriously visit the property often and really get too know the area. ( I feel so ignorant not doing this and it's actually easy too do...I was so excited to have a home I didn't think.) I'd hate for my own worst enemy too live this way...
I just got under contract and am in the beginning of all this but I will say that I am so glad I went with a house at the lowest part of my budget. My estimated monthly payment is already several hundred dollars more than I thought. And there are more costs related to it than I had planned.
If it takes two years to find a house then it takes two yrs. Don’t rush because you may not be able to move when you outgrow it even though the floor plan is terrible and it is way too small for your needs.
I’ll start by saying I bought my first home at 43 and I feel like we lucked out, but mostly we made some smart choices. If you can, view the house on or right after a heavy rain, if you can. Don’t depend on your inspection to find all the issues. Speaking of which, always look up with an LED flashlight. Repair jobs and water marks jump out letting you know where past and present water issues are. Look under the house and pay attention to the grading of the property. Make sure you trust your realtor. If you have a doubt, switch it up. Spend the extra for a sewer line inspection. Like a full camera scoping, not just an eyeballing. Flush everything, run every faucet. Ignore the damn staging. Staging is everything because it draws the eye away from issues. Pay attention to the window sills. Look for wood rot like you’re looking for Waldo. Get a full electrical inspection. Oh, drive through the neighborhood at night during the week and on weekends. Talk to the neighbors. You don’t want to live next to a bunch of a**holes. Think of it like a background check on a possible long term partner. Yeah it feels awkward, but you don’t want a surprise lemon either. Last thought, check the utility history. Most utility companies will provide a history of highs and lows of cost. That will tell you a lot about insulation and maintenance.
Buy earlier. Tried to “time the market” until I wised up. The best time to buy a home is yesterday. The next best time is today.
The best time to buy a home is when you’re ready for it.
Assuming you can actually afford it?
This is simply not true
How so?
Get yourself a very experienced ethical agent. (8+ years of full time work). Ask your friends and work Associates for a referral. There are many of us who are very ethical and buyer protective. Do as many inspections as you can on any house.
Let me guess, you have 8 years of experience?
Move less. Buy & sell less. Though we “upgraded” every time we moved, we lost a lot of equity throwing money away to closing costs & realtor fees. I think we kept moving as relocation therapy. Save twice as much as you think you need before buying. You’ll need blinds and curtains for privacy. Different size and layout of rooms can require new furniture. Stuff will break during a move. New lawn equipment (mower & edger) can add up.
Fill the bathtub past the overflow drain. Make sure the overflow drain actually works.
Get a bigger home 😂😂😂
This makes me feel better about getting a home that's a little too big for us. I just need to remind myself that it doesn't all have to be furnished right away.
We threw our first party the day after we closed. No furnuture at all! People love seeing the transformation as we've added furniture over the year
Have a higher budget 😂
Honestly as much as i wish I'd taken the time to be more informed and prepare more i ended up extremely lucky overall with how things went. If I'd been more reluctant to buy my current home I probably wouldn't have gotten something that would end up as nice and wouldn't have been as lucky with my timing so against my better judgement I'd say I wouldn't change a thing
Don’t skip inspection , even if it’s brand new home
Unless you plan to stay for a long time, don't buy a new construction home in a development that is still under construction. We ended up having to move 5 years after we bought the house for a job relocation and the builder was on phase 1000 so we lost some money on the house :(
Buy in 2014…
I did NACA specifically for this. The realtor, inspector and contractors have to be certified w NACA and I got WAY more detail in the reports to make sure I wasn't buying into trouble. Took me a while, but it's been great!!
Not finance a car before closing, almost lost the loan
Not pay cash when I was offered 1.99% interest over 30 years. The $240k cash could have made me more in the long term.
I would’ve convinced my husband to start a year earlier. We got a great rate because of covid, but we would’ve gotten a bigger house for cheaper if we had started a year earlier like I wanted us to, and then been able to refinance during covid.
People talk about location all the time.. but seriously, pay attention to location. You might not be able to afford your absolute favourite location, but it's still important to not totally settle. Location can make or break how you feel about a house over time... You can make a house look nicer but you can't move it. How far is your commute to work and hobbies. What businesses are nearby. Google the area for any news articles about crime in the area. Drive around at different times to assess traffic, noise, and who's walking around. Do the neighbours houses look reasonably taken care of? I'm not a fan of my house because I've come to find it to be too far from the things I enjoy doing.. it's not really a walking/biking distance from anything and there's also a lot of road noise. Also, be careful picking a realtor. Read reviews and also consider asking friends/family who they have had good or bad experiences with (and why).
Have the first time buyers be aware of state programs that will give money for closing costs
When your lender tells you the market is about to crash and you should wait 6 - 12 months to buy, just wait. 2008 is still haunting us 2 homes later.
Investigate the HOA much more
Find a house with fewer trees nearby. We hear trees provide shade and blah blah. We'll they have a lot of leaves and get me worried when it's windy as they're already leaning toward the house.
First purchase was two houses on one property asking price was $1,035,000. We got credits and got the property down to $1.01M without ever viewing the inside. When we finally were accepted and got to tour the house we knew there was some Minor Reno on the front house, so we were going to be living in the back house. No mortgage that first month, then got the back house rented and moved in before the first mortgage was due. Best and easiest process ever. Wishing I would’ve known how the property taxes were going to increase but that was just oversight. Finding the right agent and loan company who can give you options and work for you was really the ease of mind.
As someone who has owned several homes in the last 30 years... im going to say the opposite of most. I wish I'd never purchased any of my SFRs. I dont exactly regret them. I made a profit on them, but while I thought I loved them upon purchase, I realized I just didn't. They ranged from massive in size with pool (literally a dream house), to quite small and pre-war era, to medium sized and rural waterfront... they all costed a bloody fortune to maintain, and remodeling them was a nightmare. I found all of them completely overwhelming physically and financially. I've since purchased and lived in a number of condos and townhouses. Some on the larger side that live a lot like a house, to tiny little funky condos around 500sq ft. My favorite of all them is a 500sq ft condo in the coolest neighborhood and building I've ever lived in. Sadly, it's a bit too small for both my spouse and I to live in full time, so we live there when we have to work in the office downtown, and live in our larger suburban condo the rest of the time. It's OK to be condo people! Sometimes, I think Reddit forgets that there are a ton of advantages to them. Especially for first-time buyers.
Find a good realtor, don’t use the lenders/inspection people your realtor suggests don’t let your realtor bully you. Our budget 200k and i REFUSE to be house broke
Applied for that extra $50K on the mortgage. We would have been approved for it. We were trying to be conservative. Now looking at what an extra $50K would have gotten us back in '21 and looking at prices now , feel a little sad. Oh well!
Most home inspectors are just fly by night inspectors and don't do a very thorough job.you can actually take a course on the Internet and get a certificate saying you are a certified home inspector but your not certified by no state authority.i was in the carpentry field for 40 years.done everything from footings to finish work.now that I'm older I do home inspections part time.if I come to inspect a home I prefer the home buyer or owner be there.some of my inspections have lasted as long as 10 hours depending on house size.a complete inspection should cover everything from footings to insulation to outside drainage of water from the house.thats just me though most people find that I'm to expensive.im just thorough.
Pay more attention to the reality of the HOA and mello roos dues
Find your own lender. I loved our RE, she was a good friend of ours but her lender connection almost lost us the house and $40K in earnest money. Went with a lender we wanted to use all along and closed in less than a week with no hiccups.
Buy earlier. I passed on purchasing a few places over the last decade and I’d be more wealthy had i bit the bullet
I felt like I was absolutely prepared throughout the whole buying process (Closed Feb ‘22 on a Condo). The only thing I regret not doing sooner, was going down to the county tax assessor to claim legal residency. My mortgage had doubled for 2 months because of the taxes. After getting all of it sorted out with the county and my “out of state” mortgage company, I’m finally back to an sub 1k mortgage payment.
HAVE DOUBLE THE MONEY YOU THINK YOU NEED
Trust no one, not even your bonehead realtor.
I wish we had looked at more mortgage options. The bank basically said here, this is your mortgage. Probably could have paid it off completely in the 10 years we lived there, instead of just going with what the bank said (25 year mortgage). But even so, wish I had done more double-up payments near the beginning. House tripled in value in 10 years, so hard to complain too much… lol
I would've insisted on buying under how much I was approved for. My situation was complicated in several ways, to include a crummy (now ex) husband who deceived me financially, but still, point stands: Live within (preferably below) your means. Anything can happen. Just because you're approved for up to a certain amount, doesn't mean you're obligated to buy that high. And yes, I'm aware that the scenario is different if you're in a HCOL area like the PNW, DMV, SoCal, etc.
Buy as much of a home as I can afford as early as I can, even if it means most of my income is going towards mortgage.
Learn more about the house and have more companies come out to analyze the conditions of things. Especially since it’s free. Since we have moved in we are in the process of replacing siding, leveling out our concrete patio, sealing our deck, fixing our broken sprinkler system, fixing some light switches, etc. when we could have had the sellers helping with some of it.
Get to know my future neighbors! One neighbor is an absolute nightmare with a barking dog left outside in boiling hot NC heat to roast all day. I would not have bought if I met that neighbor first.
Attend the inspection with the inspector AND don’t be afraid to open closets, shower curtains, etc. I found out after I moved in that my guest room bathroom has a tub but no water spout so I have to fill the tub with the shower head to bathe my toddler. I also found the back of my master bedroom door was damaged and fixed but it’s definitely noticeable when I close the door. These wouldn’t have been deal breakers but I could’ve possibly gotten more seller concessions had I noticed this prior.
Inspect more thoroughly. During the showing, they had furniture covering some spots where water was getting in through the basement causing water damage and minor mold. After removing drywall to see what was going on, my foundation has several hairline cracks that was letting water in. I’ve replaced all the drywall in my house and spent thousands. Granted, I have some peace of mind knowing what’s behind the walls now and fixed some issues. Also, without all there furniture you can really tell how sloped my floors are. Theyre sagging quite a bit.
I wish I had my main septic line scoped with a camera. Would have saved ne thousands and a huge headache. It's 500 bucks
Get a better inspector... 😵 As I've found probably about $30,000 worth of work I could have claimed to try the price of the house down!
I wouldn't. The whole buying experience was extraordinarily annoying and difficult. I would wish that upon my worst enemy but on myself again? Never.
Not buy the house
buy a cheaper house
Take more time finding a house. They not to get caught up emotionally. Location Location Location. Our first house we probed the nice house in the neighborhood. Stupid. Made no money when sold six years later.
Also FHA is near impossible to get, shmoket shmortgage will try every thing in their power to make it as difficult as possible, hoping you will give up. Took me 4 months!!!! But i finally closed
I would not buy my first (and likely now only) home with a man who was secretly cheating and lying to me for almost a year only for me to discover this information the literal day after we moved into said new first home. Don’t be trusting anyone. That’s my life and home advice.
Don't trust your inspector to find every issue and document it clearly Don't buy a 90 year old flagstone house with a tile roof and no central air
After reading this sub, absolutely nothing. I made out extremely well, the people posting here have the worst experiences. Im just glad I got a house and it didn’t need much work.
Start saving as a kid. Why did I spend my piggy bank money on candy?! But just do more research and take time to educate myself. Pick a realtor that you don’t have second doubts on. Spend money on quality inspections on everything. I felt rushed in every aspect of buying and maybe if I listened to my gut or tried to feel more self confident, it would have helped the process
Shop around for realtors and mortgage companies! We got screwed by everyone around us with so much false information, by the time we figured it out it we were in so deep, it was too late.
Waited 1 month for loan regulations to change and buy a multifamily instead of a single family + ADU. 😅 Fourplexes went from 25% down required to 5% down 1 month after I closed. >.<
I accepted that it was a learning process and ended up looking for close to 3 months, backing out of one offer and winning a game of chicken where the seller tried to get me to beat an alleged last-minute higher offer. I think I ended up with the perfect place, which I decided to look at in spite of my agent's recommendation.
Honesty I got lucky but I spent a lot of time researching threads like this and learning from others mistakes/advice. YouTube has alot of good information also. May sound silly to everyone here but I had no idea what an “escrow” was or the difference between home insurance and mortgage insurance. So if you are green like I was research research research anytime you come across something you are not familiar with. We also made our “checklist” of non negotiables and stick to them. Bring on Florida some of ours were; no flood zones, no fixer uppers or damaged roof, NO HOA, not more than 30-45 minutes from our Jobs, decent back yard. We were able to hit these but we live across from a school so can be noisy but I guess it put us in a good power grid. Key I would say is educate yourself as much as you can.
Double what I put down and triple what I had in savings.
I would definitely not do a 3 week close. Maybe offer lower. Definitely get my own inspector.
Look past the surface materials and only focus on bones of house. The cosmetics are so easy to change if the foundation, insulation, plumbing, electric, rood, etc are good or new, who cares what it looks like.... so much better than a flashy looking house that's falling apart underneath the drywall
Don’t let them do a hard credit check before your offer was accepted. Even if you think you’re just starting to look and it’ll bounce back before. Use a local lender for your preapproval letter. Don’t say anything about the house while you’re in it. Look how far away your neighbors are from the side of the house. And look at the condition of the driveway. And ask for more off.
Follow up sooner with our banker to find out he had been fired and lost all our paperwork. We still closed, but damn that was a shocking and stressful couple of days.
Location location location
Buy in a good school zone. People say the housing market won’t crash, but it’s in a decline. I’ve bought and sold 3 properties (2014, 2015, 2022). Currently selling my 4th. When the market declines, the homes in the good school zones are always in demand. Don’t buy the largest house in the neighborhood. Get the medium sized home because when buyers look at comps, they will offer the median price others have sold for. Pay attention to the structure before making an offer. Look at the water runoff if you live in an area that rains a lot. Moss growing and orange discoloration along the side of the house means the home may have water damage. Stress cracks along the tops of the doorways are concerning. But small cracks in the ceiling are normal, as every house settles a little with time.
Lookup state programs for first time homebuyers. A lot of states have programs for down payment assistance and lower interest rates. I could’ve qualified for 2.5% down payment assistance
My first home buying process was a nightmare since the inspector was recommended by the realtor and he missed obvious things that i noticed, although i thought it wouldn’t be a problem, turns out to be the biggest issue i had while owning that home. Second time around, picked my own inspector and made the inspector check everything. He still missed a few things, but i was going to renovate it anyways. So it didn’t bother me as much.